Paul McCartney Thought Bottle of Whiskey Cost Just $2.50

Paul McCartney biographer Barry Miles used the example of the former Beatle recently thinking approximately $2.50 would buy a bottle of whiskey to demonstrate that it was impossible for him to be the “normal person” he’d love to be.

Miles, who wrote the 1997 book Many Years From Now, said McCartney had always been keen to remain as ordinary as he could, but the trappings of fame and fortune meant it couldn’t happen.

“He desperately wanted to be a normal person,” Miles told the Express in a new interview. “Wherever possible, he would take a bus somewhere … and was very anxious to stay in touch with what he regarded as ordinary people. ... I remember just a few years ago when I was at his studio, he asked one of the roadies to go out and buy him a bottle of whiskey, because he had people coming over, and he gave him £2. And the roadie said, ‘Well, it’s gone up since then, Paul.’”

Miles noted that "in the end, you can’t be normal. You can’t be that famous for that many years and still be in touch with ordinary people. All the people surrounding him are essentially yes men, even though they don’t intend to be and he doesn’t intend them to be. But no one’s going to argue with him obviously because that’s not what you do.”

Looking back on the Beatles, Miles said McCartney’s relationship with John Lennon was “so deep that it transcended any bickering over money or management.”

“Paul said that on a number of occasions they’d be in the middle of an argument and John would just pull his little granny glasses down the end of his nose, look over the top and say, ‘It’s only me,’ and then go back to shouting and blinding and swearing," he recalled. "You can’t go through something like Beatlemania without being totally close to the other members. For all those years they were in that strange bubble.”